On the evening of May 11, 1857, about fifty foreigners, all unarmed civilians, were brought into the palace at Delhi, and by order of Bahander Shah, the Mogul whom the mutineer leaders had proclaimed Emperor of India, were thrust into a dungeon, starved for five days and then hacked to pieces in the beautiful courtyard.  The new emperor, a weak-minded old man with no energy or ability, and scarcely intellect enough to realize his responsibilities, pronounced judgment and issued the orders prepared for him by the conspirators by whom he was surrounded.  But retribution was swift and sure.  A few weeks later when the British troops blew in the walls of the palace citadel after one of the most gallant assaults ever recorded in the annals of war, the old man, with two of his sons, fled to the tomb of Humayon, who occupied the Mogul throne from 1531 to 1556, as if that sanctuary would be revered by the British soldiers.

This tomb is one of the most notable buildings in India.  It stands on the bank of the Jumna River, about five miles from the present city of Delhi.  It is an octagonal mass of rose-colored sandstone and white marble, decorated with an ingenuity of design and delicacy of execution that have never been surpassed, and is crowned by a marble dome of perfect Persian pattern, three-fourths the diameter of that of St. Paul’s Cathedral of London, and almost as large as that of the Capitol at Washington.  In this splendid mausoleum, where twelve of his imperial ancestors sleep, the Last of the Moguls endeavored to conceal himself and his sons, but Colonel Hodson, who commanded a desperate volunteer battalion of foreigners whose property had been confiscated or destroyed by the mutineers, whose wives had been ravished and whose children had been massacred, followed the flying Mogul to the asylum he sought, and dragged him trembling and begging for mercy from among the tombs.

Hodson was a man of remarkable character and determination and was willing to assume responsibility, and “Hodson’s Horse,” as the volunteer battalion was called, were the Rough Riders of the Indian mutiny.  He took the aged king back to Delhi and delivered him to the British authorities alive, but almost imbecile from terror and excitement.  The two princes, 19 and 22 years of age, he deliberately shot with his own revolver before leaving the courtyard of the tomb in which they were captured.

This excited the horror of all England.  The atrocities of the mutineers were almost forgotten for the moment.  That the heirs of the throne of the great Moguls should be killed by a British officer while prisoners of war was an offense against civilization and Christianity that could not be tolerated, although only a few weeks before these two same princes had participated in the cold-blooded butchery of fifty Christian women and children.  There was a parliamentary investigation.  Hodson explained that he had only a few men, too few to guard three prisoners of such importance; that